It is commonly said that a picture is worth a thousand words. It seems that US smartphone users agree, for Instagram has now passed Twitter in active user count. The legions of Instagrammers aren't just checking their beloved social network more than their Tweeting counterparts -- their eyeballs are glued on it longer as well.
Point-and-shoot cameras aren't doing so hot these days as consumers are replacing their multiple electronic devices with a single gadget: the smartphone. The compact cameras that have a chance of surviving are the ones that are special in some way, whether it's having a gigantic sensor or being hardened with serious weatherproofing.
With the advent of Internet-connectivity and apps in cameraphones and digital cameras, images can now be shared with others in ways never before seen in the history of photography. Unfortunately, not all of the ways are positive. Some are downright creepy.
Take PlaceRaider, for example. It's a malicious Android app that hijacks your smartphone's camera, secretly takes photos of your life, and uses those images to reconstruct 3D virtual spaces of private locations.
Last month we wrote about how the small focusing lens inside a laser pointer can be repurposed as a cheap macro lens for your smartphone. After seeing this project online, photo enthusiast John Coleman decided to give it a shot. To keep the lens secure against your phone, you'll need something to hold it (e.g. a hair pin) and some tape to attach the holder to the phone. The photo above shows the super simple attachment Coleman created.
Lens caps are often cast aside in favor of lens hoods, but what if you could have both in one accessory? That's what the Hoocap does. It's not as fancy as the blooming lens hood concept we featured a year ago, but it seems pretty well thought out. Extend the cap/hood out from your camera, and the two "curtains" open up, allowing the camera to "see" and blocking errant light from causing flares. Close it, twist it, and push it into your lens, and it locks into its closed position for protecting your glass.
Photographer Noah Kalina has taken a self-portrait a day for the past 12.5 years, but his already-impressive project has now been bested by one that's nearly twice as long. When Leeds Met University student Cory McLeod was born 21 years ago, his parents began faithfully documenting his life by taking a single photograph of his face every single day. This past week, the project was published as a one-of-a-kind video titled "21 Years" that shows McLeod's entire life in roughly six minutes.
One major trend in the camera industry this year is the introduction of mobile operating systems such as Android into digital cameras. By opening the door to things like Wi-Fi, data plans, and apps, camera makers are going in the same direction that phone makers went some years ago, turning their devices into what can best be described as portable computers with specialized functions (e.g. voice-calling, photography).
While covering the trend, we've been at a loss for what to call the new cameras. After calling the Samsung Galaxy Camera a "voiceless phonecamera" in our hands-on first-look yesterday, commenters suggested that we call the device a "smartcamera". Bingo... that's the term we were looking for.
Want a better understanding of how the metering and AE-lock features in your DSLR camera work? YouTube photography tutorial …
Two interesting Canon rumors are currently floating around. The first has to do with the 46MP DSLR that Canon is reportedly field testing and may be planning to unveil in late October. Northlight Images received a tip saying the camera's body will be 1D-X-esque:
In an update to the high MP info, we're told that a camera will eventually appear in a 1D X derived body, in the same way as the 1D C. The information said that the actual designation was not known, but it would essentially be a '1 series'. There was also a warning that there would be a long wait between any 'preview' and any cameras being annouced and subsequently shipping.
If true, this means Canon is going for the larger pro-style body rather than following after Nikon's 36.3MP D800.
If you’re a fan of Instagram, then you’ll probably appreciate this neat DIY project by Elsie and Emma of …
Ever wonder what it looks like when you fire a gun underwater? Firearm enthusiast Andrew Tuohy of VuurwapenBlog recently decided to find out. Taking his .40 Glock 22 into his swimming pool, he captured some high speed videos of himself firing a round using an ordinary Pentax Optio WG-2 waterproof compact camera (which has a 120fps movie recording mode). The photograph above is a still taken from one of the videos.
Played around with the new Samsung Galaxy Camera very briefly at Photokina last week. It's basically a camera-fied smartphone that doesn't do voice calling. It does have 3G/4G/Wi-Fi connectivity though, so it's one of the first -- if not the first -- compact camera you can add a data plan to.
Last year there was a minor controversy when the Portland Police Department began posting photos of arrested Occupy protestors to Facebook. It may or may not have been inspired by the PPD, but Pottstown, Pennsylvania newspaper The Pottstown Mercury has begun sharing photographs of wanted individuals through the popular photo sharing service Pinterest.
Daniel Kukla is a photographer who had formal training in biological and anthropological sciences. His educational background plays a major part of his artistic practice, and this can be seen in his clever project titled, The Edge Effect.
Kodak divisions are falling left and right as the company struggles to claw its way out of bankruptcy protection. After killing off its camera business and selling off its film business earlier this year, Kodak announced today that it will shortly be pulling out of the consumer printing business in order to focus on commercial printing.
Here's an interesting way to provide a behind-the-scenes look at how a portrait shoot was done. After photographing British comedian Frank Skinner, UK-based photographer Harry Borden took all the unedited photos from the shoot and turned them into a one-minute time-lapse movie. The resulting short film is a glimpse into how a session progressed from one pose to another, and the different ideas that were tried.
Samsung is doing one of the strangest promotional stunts we've seen in recent times. To celebrate the new NX1000 mirrorless camera announced back in April, they're giving away the camera to anyone in the UK named David Bailey.
That's right. If you share a name with the famous British photographer -- regarded as one of the best in the land -- then there's a NX1000 with your name on it.
People vs. Places is a creative collaborative photo project by photographers Timothy Burkhart and Stephanie Bassos. They create double exposure photos by each shooting the same roll of film, but with a neat twist: they each stick to a theme:
This double exposure project allows us to step back from having full control of the image making process and trust in one another while allowing coincidences to happen naturally on film. Stephanie exposes a full roll of 35mm film of only "people," and Timothy reloads the film again into the same camera, to imprint only "places" and locations to the same roll. These images are all the end result of our ongoing series and are unedited negatives straight from the camera.
Thus, each image shows a randomly created clash between a photo of a person and a photo of a place.
Sony has agreed to pour $645 million into Olympus in exchange for 11.5 percent of the embattled company, becoming the single largest shareholder. While the companies announced that they are considering cooperating in the digital camera industry, the main motivation for Sony wasn't photographic imaging but body imaging. Olympus is one of the major players in the medical endoscope market, holding about 70% of sales, and Sony's investment allows it to dip its toes into this lucrative industry.
Behold: one of the rarest photobooks in the world. What you're looking at is an exceedingly rare complete set of American photographer Edward S. Curtis' book The North American Indian. It contains 772 large-format photogravures on Japanese tissue, 111 signed plates, and 20 extra text volumes that contain an additional 1,505 photogravures, 4 maps, and 2 diagrams.
Swann Galleries will be auctioning it off on October 4, 2012 with an estimated price of $1,250,000 - $1,750,000. This figure, however, may end up being much lower than the actual price it'll sell for. A similar set of this photobook was auctioned by Christie's back in April. After giving that set an estimated price of $1,000,000 - $1,500,000, it ended up selling for a whopping $2,882,500.
Earlier this year, we featured a project by photographer Sannah Kvist that showed portraits of urban young people posing next to a pile of all their worldly possessions. Jiadang (Family Stuff) by Chinese photographer Huang Qingjun is similar in concept, but very different in content. He has spent nearly a decade traveling around to various rural communities in China, asking families to take everything they owned and carefully arrange them outdoors for a picture.
You've probably heard people say that you should keep your camera gear with you at all times when flying, as there are multiple points in the travel process at which your valuable equipment could get stolen or damaged. In case you're not convinced, check out the video above showing an investigative report that ABC News recently did.
To test airports that have a history of theft, Brian Ross of ABC's The Blotter left 10 iPads inside the plastic bins at security checkpoints. At 9 out of 10 airports, the screeners followed protocol and immediately contacted the owner using the contact info prominently displayed on the iPad. In the 10th case, an agent was filmed taking the iPad out of the bin before it vanished.
Back in 1992, Los Angeles-based photographer Laura London lived down the street from the singer of the rock band. The singer's name was Axl Rose. The band was Gunz N' Roses.
Flash forward twenty years, and London is currently holding a photo exhibition for her project, "Once Upon a Time ... Axl Rose Was My Neighbor," at Coagula Curatorial in LA. The show features photographs from the time London spent living a stone's throw away from a man who is now considered one of the greatest hard rock singers of all time, along with portraits of Rose wannabes and band photo recreations. One particular image in the show attracted the attention of Rose, and not in a good way -- it led to a lawsuit threat.
Watts Martin of Coyote Tracks has an interesting piece titled “Iconic” that discusses …
Bob Ross became a household name a couple of decades ago through his show The Joy of Painting on PBS. His friendly personality, soothing voice, and artistic talent got countless people hooked on oil painting, beating the devil out of paintbrushes, and creating happy little trees and clouds. He's the kind of guy who could (and did) talk about watching paint dry and make it enjoyable.
Thomas Shahan is the closest thing we've found so far to a photographic Bob Ross. In the video above, he introduces us to the art of high-magnification macro photography, which he employs to create vibrant images of all kinds of tiny critters.
Japanese camera blog Egami found an interesting just-published patent by Epson that was first filed last year. The goal of the technology appears to be to make older vintage lenses more useable on newer cameras. Basically, it seems that the company wants to add a small camera/mirror/lens component to the front of camera that's designed to track the settings on old manual lenses. The photos in the patent show what appears to be Epson R-D1 cameras enhanced with special arms that are dedicated to spying on the lens' settings.
Ithaca College, a small private school in New York, recently conducted a fun photo experiment to capture a day in the life of the students on campus. Instead of sending a photographer around to various student hotspots, the student social media team left ten disposal cameras in five locations around campus with a note that read:
Hey, I just left this camera here for the day. Take some fun pictures with you and your friends! I'll be back later to pick it up
At the end of the day, all the cameras were collected, all the film was developed, revealing an "authentic view of a day at Ithaca College."
Sony made huge ripples in the camera industry earlier this month by announcing a compact camera with a full frame sensor: the RX1. The camera features a bokehlicious 35mm f/2 Carl Zeiss lens, a super compact size, and a price tag of $2,800 that broke many a photographer's heart.
For those of you who are wondering how the fusion of compact and full frame performs, Sony has uploaded a number of full-resolution sample photographs. Pixel-peepers, prepare to gawk in amazement at the quality that's now possible with fixed lens compact cameras.
Living and working in New York City, Canadian writer and producer Christopher Moloney walks past many locations used as settings in movies. This past summer, he began documenting those spots with an awesome "photo in a photo" project. Using a simple black-and-white printer and a cheap digital camera, Moloney visits the exact locations where famous scenes were filmed at, and shoots a photograph of a printed movie still from just the right perspective so that it blends into the background. His website, titled "FILMography" (film + photography) has hundreds of these creative images so far.
Earlier this month, Nokia found itself in a public relations nightmare after it came to light that photos and …
Vanguard announced a fancy new professional tripod at Photokina last week, and today we're giving you the opportunity to win one of the first ones as photographers are just getting their hands on them. The Vanguard ABEO Plus 323CB is an uber-durable carbon fiber tripod that comes with a BBH-200 pro ball head. It features a fast-adjustment central column, tension adjustable leg locks, 3-in-1 feet (rubber, spikes, and snow/sand shoes) for stability on any surface, an anti-shock ring, and accessory hook, and a max weight of 26.4 pounds. It's retail value? $600.
Earlier this month we shared some neat photos of astronauts using DSLRs while on spacewalks outside the International Space Station. In case you're also wondering how the cameras are used inside the habitable satellite, we've carefully perused NASA's 2Explore Flickr photo stream in search of those photos as well, and have collected them here in one place for your viewing pleasure. They've got some pretty nice gear up in the ISS... lucky astronauts.
If you’re trying to make some side money by selling photographs as microstock — or are trying to do …
We've shared some pretty intense footage captured using helmet-mounted cameras in the past, but perhaps none as crazy as the video above. Shot by a US soldier in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, the video offers a point-of-view look at what it's like to face machine gun fire from the Taliban. [Editor's note: Be warned -- there's a bit of mature language.]
Would you use a camera app that could only shoot a single photo before becoming useless as a camera? The answer is probably no, but you should still take a look at One Memento nevertheless. It's might sound unappealing at first, but the idea behind the app is quite interesting.
It's a photography experiment that's based on the idea of limitations. By making the app a one-shot digital camera, the makers are forcing people to seriously think about what they would like to capture and share with the world.
North Carolina-based photographer Daniel Lowe sent us the gorgeous video above, which shows star trails forming and floating across the sky. Most time-lapse videos of the night sky show stars as points of light, rotating around Earth's pole. Lowe's video shows the long streaks of star trails doing the rotating, making the video even more surreal and magical.
If you were thinking about buying the iPhone 5 as your primary carry-around camera, you might want to hold off on that. Reports are emerging that the camera suffers from purple flares when bright light sources are in or around the frame. Cult of Mac reports that iPhone 5 owners are taking to online forums to express their displeasure with this issue.
Yesterday we featured an interesting example of digital photographs being reintroduced into the real world in another form (Google Street View photos as life-sized portraits), and now here's another one. For her project "Broken Houses", NYC-based photographer Ofra Lapid created realistic models of abandoned buildings using printed photos, and then photographed them on an infinite gray background.
Winter is just around the corner, and the Canadian government has plans for a crazy photographic science project to welcome it. The goal of the effort will be to capture images of a single falling snowflake. They plan to use an extremely fast (and presumably expensive) camera that's capable of capturing detailed footage of the flakes as they float down to Earth.
While attending Photokina 2012 in Cologne, Germany last week to talk about the C300 for Canon, filmmaker …